Smoke and Ashes (14 page)

“Curtains can be replaced,” she reminded him as she returned to her place out of the line of fire, “I can't. Once more, with less feeling.”

“I don't think…”

“Good. You think too much and we're running out of time. Do what you just did, only less.”

“Less. Right.” Tony wiped damp palms on his thighs, extended his finger again, and very carefully refocused. To his surprise, a bright blue light burned in approximately the right position and then went out. Okay, almost there. He needed less less.
That's more, right?
Licking dry lips, he tried again. The blue light burned longer.
A little more.
And again. This time the light maintained; became a line; the line bent into a circle; the edges of the circle sputtered, but the shape held. Within the circle, two dots of power for eyes. The curve of a smile.

It was slightly lopsided but recognizable.

“What is it?”

Or not.

“It's a happy face.” Even when he turned away, the power he'd used to create the symbol hung in the air. It was bone useless but way cool. “I told you it would be…” His voice trailed off as the sound of laughter filled the condo.

Tony whirled around, both hands up, expecting some kind of demonic clown charging in from the balcony. There was only his happy face, all blue and glowing and hanging in the air. Given the way it was laughing, it seemed to be very, very happy indeed.

“Simple,” Leah said, raising her voice enough to be heard. “You said it would be simple. I think you meant to tell me that you were simple. And when I say simple, I don't mean that you're easy, I mean that you're…”

The
Darkest Night
theme joined the laughter to drown out her last word.

Since he couldn't think anything else to do, Tony answered his phone.

“Tony! There's something in the soundstage! It's ripping the place apart. There's crashing and screaming and…”

“Lee!”

“No, it's Amy, you ass!”

He knew that. “I meant…”

“I don't give a good goddamn what you meant! Get in here!”

“What…”

But there was only the dial tone. Over by the window, the happy face kept laughing.

Shoving the phone back in his backpack, Tony hung it over one shoulder as he ran for the door. “The demon's at the studio!”

“Tony! Wait!”

“Forget it, Leah. You want your body guarded, you come with me.”

“I intend to.” She grabbed his backpack and dragged him around. “But you can't leave that thing hanging in my condo!”

The happy face kept laughing.

Tony stretched out his left arm and sucked the energy back through the scar. He had the giggles all the way to the underground garage.

 

Leah's driving made it difficult to practice the four runes he needed to know. He'd taken half a dozen pictures of the tattoo with the camera on his phone and, with his knees pressed against the dash and the phone open on his knees, he tried to memorize the swoops and curls as he sketched.

Tried to sketch.

“Leah!”

“You want to get there in time or what?” Considerably over the 100K limit, she cut in and out of westbound traffic in order to maintain her speed.

The TransCanada was a slightly less direct route back to the studio, but it had no lights and they were making amazing time—even considering the amount of lateral movement. Flung right then left, Tony wondered again why every time something metaphysical came down, he ended up in a car with people who drove like complete maniacs. Henry, Arra, Mouse, Jack, Leah…

“Hey!” The car started to hydroplane on the wet pavement, the back end fishtailing for about thirty meters before Leah got it under control. Tony caught the phone before it hit the floor but lost his pencil. “We're not all immortal here!”

“Trust me. I'm a professional stunt driver.”

“They aren't!” The drivers of a late ‘90s Buick and a little imported hybrid flipped them off in quick succession. Hoping Leah's protective coating would work against road rage, he bent to find the pencil. He'd just about decided to take off his shoulder belt when he heard the siren and straightened so quickly he cracked his head on the dash. “Shit. Is that for us?”

“Seems to be. Are you crying?”

“No. My eyes are watering, I hit my head. You're not stopping!”

“Neither is the demon at the soundstage.”

Good point. He wasn't looking forward to explaining it to the police but, still, a good point.

“If it is a demon.” She slid between two transports, passed on the right shoulder, and somehow ended up back in the left lane.

“What do you mean if?” Tony demanded.

“If it's a demon, why is it at your soundstage? Why isn't it hunting for me?” As they passed the Kensington on ramp, an unmarked car squealed onto the highway in front of them, siren also wailing, the light on the dash just barely visible through distance and rain. “They're trying to cut us off!”

He grabbed the wheel before Leah could change lanes. “No. Follow them.”

“Are you insane?”

“They're not slowing down, and the car behind us has fallen back.”

“I lost him.”

“No.” There was no mistaking Jack Elson's pale blond hair in the unmarked car. “I know these guys.”

Leah shot him a quick glance. “Your Mountie buddy?”

“Eyes on the road! My Mountie buddy and his partner,” he expanded when his heart started beating again. An East Indian woman was driving and he was willing to bet she had to be Constable Danvers regardless of how much ethnic recruiting the RCMP did.

“I forgot to add them to the list of the people who know what you are, didn't I? Why didn't you just tell the papers?” she continued before he could answer. “It'd save time.”

As the two cars sped toward the studio, he tried to remember if he'd told her about Kevin Groves. And what it was
about
Kevin Groves that he'd intended to tell her. “Well, technically…”

“I don't want to know.”

They fishtailed off the ramp onto Boundary, squealed tires through the gate of the industrial complex, and sprayed gravel in tandem as they pulled up in the parking lot at CB Productions.

Jack was out of the car, gun in his hand, before the gravel hit the ground again. “When they called in your plates, I figured something was up. What is it?” he demanded, falling into step as Tony sprinted for the building.

Tony hesitated, wondering if Jack had kept his partner in the loop. Television cops never kept secrets from their partners. “There's a demon ripping up the soundstage!”

“A what?” Danvers yelled as the four of them pounded in through the office doors.

“A demon!” Tony skidded to a stop as the dozen or so people in the office turned to stare.

He stared.

They stared.

“Jesus, Tony…” Amy's brows dipped to nearly touch over her nose. “…what the hell happened to your neck?”

“Not important.” Trust Amy. He couldn't stop himself from touching the bite as he hurriedly counted heads. “Not everyone's out.”

“Such a grasp of the obvious,” she said to the room at large. “This is why I called him.”

“Amy.” Tina's tone suggested that was enough. “A few people got out the back,” the script supervisor continued, rocking the new and teary assistant set decorator in the circle of her arms. “There's a few still in there.”

“CB?”

All heads turned toward CB's office as though they were on a single string.

“He went in as we came out.”

Of course he had. Tony took a quick mental inventory of CB's office but could think of nothing that the big man could use as a weapon.

“Okay.” Deep breath. A quick, purposeful crossing to the door—made slightly less purposeful by the people milling about in his way.

“You brought the cops?” Zev asked, pushing through to his side.

“They brought themselves.” He reached for the door and paused. This wasn't a case of reacting to an attack, blasting before he could consider the consequences; this was deliberately going after a demon. Deliberately going after something with teeth and claws and attitude.
Try not to look like you're nearly pissing yourself.

You went after the thing in the basement,
a little voice reminded him.

Did you miss the part about teeth and claws?
he asked it.

A quick glance back over his shoulder. “You guys don't have to…”

Jack reached past him and shoved the door open. “Move!” he snapped.

So he moved.

They ran in single file between the double racks of costumes—a wizard-in-training, two RCMP officers, and an immortal stuntwoman/Demongate bringing up the rear. It sounded like the punch line of a bad joke. All they needed was a duck. Tony'd been a little afraid that either Zev or Amy would follow, but they both seemed to have more sense.

The door to the soundstage was closed.

When Tony reached to open it, Jack stopped him, hand without the gun wrapping around his wrist. “You don't just go charging in! Listen first.”

Leah raised an eyebrow in Tony's direction, sharing her amusement. “The door's soundproof. We might as well go charging in.”

“Fine. We…” Jack used his weapon to indicate that “we” in this case meant him and Danvers. “…go in first.”

“Good idea.”

The constable fixed Leah with a pale stare. “Who the hell are you?”

“Leah Burnett.”

“And?”

“I'm a stuntwoman.”

“Let me rephrase. Why are you here?”

“I don't even know why
we're
here,” Danvers muttered.

“Believe it or not…” She pointed at Tony. “…the safest place I can be is next to him.”

“Not,” Jack snorted.

Tony could feel momentum slipping away. Once it was gone, he was afraid he'd never be able to force himself onto the soundstage. Ignoring the others, he yanked open the door and charged through, heading for the area under the gate.

The Demonic Convergence was happening on the lower mainland because Leah and the oldest spell in the world currently lived here. But she didn't have the only spell around. It might not even be the strongest. It sure as hell wasn't the freshest.

Looking for that nice, fresh demonic feeling?

Oh, man, I seriously need some downtime with my brain.

In the last few weeks, the set under the gate that had brought Arra Pelindrake into this world and then taken her out again had been the living room of grieving parents, a medieval dining hall, and a veterinary office—anything they could fit into the space without moving the walls or windows. CB disapproved of unnecessary rebuilding.

The end wall had been reduced to a jagged bit of framing and a dangling piece of plywood. Standing surrounded by debris, one sleeve ripped from his suit jacket and the exposed arm hanging limp by his side, CB shook a length of pipe up at the lighting grid. “Get your scaly red ass down here so I can kick it back to whatever overblown special effect it crawled out of!”

A shriek of tortured metal from above.

One of the big lamps plummeted toward the floor.

Time was supposed to slow as certain death approached. That was the theory. Total bullshit as far as Tony was concerned. The lamp exploded against the painted concrete floor; CB dove out of the way, swinging the pipe to deflect a shard of glass away from his leg, and Tony barely had time enough to realize he should do something. No time at all to think of just what he should do.

The sound of another lamp ripped from the grid made one thing clear; he had to get the demon down.

Tony held out his hand and called.

The demon was about the size of a ten-year-old but remarkably heavy for all that. The impact knocked the breath from them both and for a moment they sprawled together on the concrete, arms and legs tangled in interspecies intimacy. Then it blinked orange eyes, and a mouth, far too wide for the face that held it, opened.

Black teeth.

Shiny and black like that lava rock Tony could never remember the name of.

Lots and lots of black teeth!

Pain flared in his left shoulder, something squeezed around his right leg, and the demon's head snapped forward.

Fuck! Teeth!

Four shots jerked it back far enough for Tony to get his left leg free. He kicked out, hard. It reared back, hissing and snarling, still attached by the tail wrapped around Tony's leg. He kicked it again, a little lower, and black claws on the hind legs shredded his jeans below the knee.